There was a time when I was content
To ramble and rhyme at mind’s light whim
Without a thought for what paths life sent
For my slow slip-shod feet to flip-flop in.
Now I grow uneasy with my self-conscious route
As I head from the local towards the global nerve-center
I feel queasy in the night’s shifty streetlight clout
That illuminates only the views that have been sent for
By those with trigger fingers on the power grid.
So now I survey the forgotten, the dark spots
Where the cracks, the joints of the machinery are hid;
I walk with my weight on the dimly shackled lots
of those wed unknowingly to the machine –
which brings me closer to dissolution than I’ve ever willingly been;
my feet are torn by the shifting, caught in the
hinging of mechanical sheen, as I stand
next to those thrown down during society’s surreptitious sifting –
so now my weight falls in the interstices
to be ground like grain (which is dispersed at wind’s blind whim)
into elegant mass, a meal for the marginal.
